


You Have To

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't want her back this way, but what's done is done and there's nothing left but to push on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Have To

**Author's Note:**

> In which Grace returns to Jefferson, but he doesn't know that he can return to her.

When Jefferson makes it back to the mansion it’s pitch dark, in spite of only being mid-evening. The magic rolling in has blotted out the stars and the moon is left floating watery and weak in the haze over the treetops. He’d left the lights off, not knowing if or when he’d return, and he almost doesn’t see her waiting for him on the steps. He certainly isn’t expecting her to be there, so he’s not prepared when she hops up and runs to him, launching herself into his arms. Her weight sends him reeling back a few paces. He picks her up. 

“Papa,” she says, and wraps her arms tight around his neck. 

Jefferson has wanted this moment for so long that now it simply feels surreal. Grace is heavier than he remembers. He kneels down so that she can stand and tucks his chin over her shoulder. Her hair tickles at his cheek and as he reaches to brush it away he realizes he’s crying. 

He feels like his heart is breaking open and he doesn’t know how to stem the tide of warmth that is flushing through him. He hasn’t cried since her mother died, which was so long and so many worlds ago that he doesn’t remember if it felt the same. She fidgets, because he’s held her close for too long, but he can’t let go of her. He’s afraid that if he does she’ll vanish. 

“Papa, are you all right?” 

Jefferson wipes his eyes with his hand and tries not to think about all of the other things he’s done with his hands since he lost her. Desperate, angry things that a man with something so joyous as her in his life would never do. He does not deserve to be able to touch her. He pulls back and clasps both of her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length. “Of course I’m all right, sunshine,” he says, choking back a deep breath. “I have you now. Everything is all right. Are you all right?”

“I’m scared,” she says. “Where are we? Where is home?” 

Anger flares in his gut and he tries to tamp it down. If Gold doesn’t kill Regina he will have to find a way. The thought is followed by shame, because that’s not something Grace’s father would do, but he doesn’t know how to simply be Grace’s father any more. All the same, he thought it was his love for Grace alone that had kept him from becoming as bad as he knew he was capable of being.“What do you remember, honey?” 

“You left. You promised you’d come back, and you didn’t.” She’s shaking under his hands. 

“I know honey. I’m sorry. I tried. I’ve been trying.”

“Daddy,” she says quietly, looking down at her feet. “I thought they were you. I loved them. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” 

“No, no,” he says, running his thumb across her cheek and smearing the trail of tears. “Shhh....It’s okay. There was a curse. Someone put all of us under a bad spell. You still love me too, don’t you?” 

She nods and sniffles, running the back of her wrist under her nose. 

“Then that’s what’s important,” he says. 

“Did they give you another daughter too? Did you have parties with someone else?”

“No,” he says. He doesn’t even have to think about it. He’d been alone when they were pulled over, saved from one Hell just to be dropped into another. And after a while of living without her he hadn’t even been fit for kindness, let alone love. “I haven’t loved anyone else but you this whole time.”

“Don’t leave me again, Daddy.” 

“I won’t, I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.” 

He picks her up again and carries her up the stairs and into the house. Her head falls to his shoulder like it did when she was very young and he swallows hard, trying to hold back the tears again. This isn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to be able to forget. To never have her know that there had been two lives and that bad people could hurt you, even if you felt like you were loving hard enough to ward them off. 

Once in the mansion she refuses to leave his side, following along after him as he sets all of the lights burning and closes and locks the doors to the rooms he can’t bear for her to enter. It’s hard enough to see his daughter perched on the settee where he’d tied up Emma. 

“What’s in there,” she asks as the key turns over in the tumbler, barring entrance to the room where he’d hid Snow.

He smiles, briefly, trying to calm her fears, and realizes that he’s forgotten how to make a smile genuine. She was the joy in his heart, the thing he always smiled for before, and now he can’t even give her that. “Just bad memories,” he says, and kisses her on the cheek. 

Jefferson puts her to bed in his own room. He wants to leave her alone in that big, empty house even less than she wants to be left alone. She curls up under the sheets and, even though the bed is large, wriggles close to him and presses her face into his side. He strokes her hair until her breathing evens out. 

“How did you know where to find me,” he asks, once he knows she can’t answer. He’d sent her to the neighbors, so it was possible that she just knew somehow to try the next house over. For a few moments he worries that her adoptive parents made her leave, but he knows from watching her that they had always loved her like their own. That shouldn’t have changed when the curse lifted. No, it would have been her who made the decision to stumble out into the dark with nothing but a vague impression of what she’d lost to guide her. She was still so much like her mother. 

“I’m sorry, because this isn’t what I wanted for you, but it doesn’t matter now,” he says, making his resolution to the world at large. He slides down so that he’s lying next to her, curled up around her smaller frame. He can feel her breath on his cheek when she exhales. “I’ve got you. I’ve got magic. I’ve got allies, finally. We’ll make it work.”


End file.
